Sanders of the River (1935)

June 27, 1935

'Sanders of the River,' a British Film Based on the Edgar Wallace Stories, at the Rivoli.

By ANDRE SENNWALD.

Published: June 27, 1935

There is a curious absence of punch and conviction in the photoplay which Zoltan Korda has culled from the pages of the Mr. Commissioner Sanders stories of the late Edgar Wallace. Though it sounds like a merry paradox, Mr. Korda's expedition to Africa in search of authentic locales and tribal atmosphere is probably the reason for his inability to blend his materials into the kind of driving melodrama which admirers of the original stories automatically expect to find. An interesting and ambitious work, "Sanders of the River" vitiates its great potential power by overemphasizing its purely atmospheric elements. Mr. Korda, seemingly enchanted by the original song-and-dance material which he filmed in Africa, inserts so much of it at critical points in the narrative that the story is always bogging down like the libretto of a musical comedy.

Nor is this motion-picture Sanders the fascinating fellow of the Edgar Wallace stories, despite the skillful performance of Leslie Banks. He was, you may remember, a merciless administrator who controlled a quarter of a million warring cannibals in the interior jungles of the British protectorate by flogging miscreants, sending them down the river in irons, or hanging them to convenient trees. The photoplay has cast a pall of sentiment over him and created a romantic portrait of the benevolent white father who guides the destinies of his black children for the greater glory of the empire on which the sun never sets. It is a little bit in the chamber of commerce tradition. Although the film tries to suggest that Sandi, the eater of lions, rules his savage domain with an iron hand, there is too little pictorial evidence of his judicial technique. Perhaps Mr. Korda feared to offend his English audiences by suggesting how powerful a part the big stick plays in colonial administration.

"Sanders of the River" gets under way when Sanders returns to the coast, bound for home and marriage. Two rascally English traders promptly inflame the natives with gin and firearms and spread the story that the mighty Sanders is dead. The drums hum through the jungles with the news. A rebellious native king murders the new administrator and captures Bosambo, a native chieftain who has remained faithful to the English. The film achieves a harrowingly weird climax in the episode in which the native king prepares to put Bosambo and his wife to the torture, the warriors whipping themselves to the pitch of blood madness as they dance before the staked captives. The chances are that you will be in possession of an acute case of the willies during the minute or two before Sandi chugs upstream to the rescue in his rickety side-wheeler and turns his machine-gun on the rebels.

Paul Robeson sings several English arrangements of native war songs, which are stimulating to hear but a decided hindrance to his portrayal of the savage Bosambo. Similarly, the talented Nina Mae McKinney is likely to impress you more as a Harlem night-club entertainer than a savage jungle beauty. To its various individual merits, the photoplay adds some splendid photography and an excellent atmospheric picture of the jungle country. But "Sanders of the River" suffers from overproduction.